Biography

Dr. Taylor received his medical degree from the University of Iowa in 1973 and completed his residency in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University in 1976. He joined the Centers for Disease Control in 1976 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer and while there, completed a residency in preventive medicine. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, and came to the NCI in 1983. He was Chief of the Cancer Prevention Studies Branch from 1987 – 2004 before joining the Genetic Epidemiology Branch in 2005. Dr. Taylor retired from federal service in 2017.

Dr. Taylor has a long-standing interest in developing cancer prevention strategies. His recent research emphasized (1) identifying germline variants of susceptibility to upper gastrointestinal (UGI) cancers through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and family studies, (2) evaluating tissue alterations in UGI cancers and premalignancy, and (3) integrating germline and somatic data with functional genomics to understand etiology and identify biomarkers for early detection and prognosis.